Product Description

Dr Moore's enterprising book focuses on an apparent paradox: the failure of Sri Lanka's highly politicised smallholder electorate to place on the national political agenda issues relating to the public distribution of material resources. Sri Lanka has more than fifty years' history of pluralist democracy and such issues directly affect the interests of the smallholder population. Yet successive Sri Lankan governments have pursued economic policies favouring food consumers and the state itself at the expense of agricultural producers. In exploring the features of Sri Lanka's history, geography, politics and economy which explain this paradox, the author looks in detail at some of the dominant features of contemporary Sri Lanka: the political consequences of the plantation experience; the persistence of elite political leadership; and the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict. He argues that the pattern of political activity is to be explained to a large extent within the sphere of politics itself: it is not, as neo-Marxist commentators might suppose, simply a function of conflicts of interest in the economic sphere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6734626 in Books
• Published on: 1985-11-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 341 pages